Getting started with the Swift API

Last updated 25th May 2021

Objective

You can use the OpenStack API to generate various scripts in order to automate your actions on the Public Cloud.

The OpenStack swiftclient lets you interact with and manage your containers and objects. For example, you can upload files to your containers regularly in order to back them up.

This guide will help you get started with the OpenStack API in order to manage your object containers using the python-swiftclient.

Requirements

• Preparing the environment to use the OpenStack API by installing python-swiftclient
• Setting the OpenStack environment variables

Instructions

Swift documentation

You can retrieve the list of possible commands from the client's documentation:

admin@server-1:~$ swift --help

Here is the list of the main commands:

For an explanation of a specific Swift command, add --help at the end of it:

admin@server-1:~$ swift post --help

Updates meta information for the account, container, or object.
If the container is not found, it will be created automatically.

Positional arguments:
[container] Name of container to post to.
[object] Name of object to post. Specify multiple times
for multiple objects.
[...]

You can also consult the Swift documentation available on the OpenStack website.

Creating a public object container

• Create the container "container1":

admin@server-1:~$ swift post container1

• Configure the access rights to make your container public:

admin@server-1:~$ swift post --header "X-Container-Read: .r:*" container1

• Check the container configuration:

admin@server-1:~$ swift stat container1

Account: AUTH_b3e26xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxb0ba29
Container: container1
Objects: 0
Bytes: 0
Read ACL: .r:*
Write ACL:
Sync To:
Sync Key:
Accept-Ranges: bytes
X-Trans-Id: B2210C05:8D93_052711A1:01BB_561CC9DF_1B305:30D7
X-Storage-Policy: Policy-0
Connection: close
X-Timestamp: 1444726875.27475
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Uploading files to your container

• Upload the content of a local folder to a container:

admin@server-1:~$ swift upload container1 images/

images/OVHlogo.png
images/OVHSummitKeynote.jpg

A prefix will automatically be added to your files if you send an entire folder instead of a single file.

• List a container's files:

admin@server-1:~$ swift list container1

images/OVHSummitKeynote.jpg
images/OVHlogo.png
text1.txt
text2.txt
text3.txt

You can display all files with a particular prefix using the --prefix argument:

admin@server-1:~$ swift list container1 --prefix images

images/OVHSummitKeynote.jpg
images/OVHlogo.png

If the container is configured as public, you can access the file using a URL:

https://storage.gra1.cloud.ovh.net/v1/AUTH_b3e26xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxb0ba29/container1/images/OVHlogo.png

This URL is made up of an endpoint, available from the Horizon interface, the name of your container and the name of your object (including the prefix).

Downloading files

• Download a file:

admin@server-1:~$ swift download container1 text1.txt

text1.txt [auth 0.328s, headers 0.452s, total 0.453s, 0.000 MB/s]

You can download multiple files with the same prefix, using the following command:

admin@server-1:~$ swift download container1 --prefix images

images/OVHlogo.png [auth 0.383s, headers 0.520s, total 0.522s, 0.135 MB/s]
images/OVHSummitKeynote.jpg [auth 0.371s, headers 0.514s, total 0.559s, 2.657 MB/s]

Deleting containers or objects

• Delete a file:

admin@server-1:~$ swift delete container1 text1.txt

text1.txt

As with downloading, you can delete multiple files using the same prefix, with the following command:

admin@server-1:~$ swift 
delete container1 images/*

images/OVHSummitKeynote.jpg
images/OVHlogo.png

• Delete a container:

admin@server-1:~$ swift delete container1

text2.txt
text3.txt

This will delete all the files in the container.

Go further

Join our community of users on https://community.ovh.com/en/.

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